THE ETERNAL JEW
One of the most notorious of the Nazi propaganda films. Produced
under the close supervision of
Joseph Goebbels, it depicts the Jews of Poland as a
less-than-human species, living like rats
and endangering racial "purity" while also controlling
world commerce. Offensive in every regard,
the film's hateful lies may seem obvious today, but
this movie remains a terrifying record of how
widely they became accepted. ENGLISH
DUBBED.
(1:00) (B/B) - UR
HERE ARE TWO RELATED LINKS:
1) a selection of
stills
from the film,
2) the Hitler speech that
concludes
the film (in Real Audio)
THE FUHRER GIVES
A TOWN TO THE JEWS
A reconstructed Nazi propaganda film, supposed to show
the humanitarian side of the Nazis.
(:30) (B/B) - OP
JUD SUSS
Leon Feuchtwangler's novel Jud Suss was originally about
a
powerful ghetto businessman
who believes himself to be a Jew. Suss' ruthless business practices
result in the betrayal of an
innocent girl, for which he is arrested and sentenced to be hanged
under the anti-Jewish laws
of the 18th century. While he waits to be executed, Suss discovers
he is not Jewish. Rather than
turn his back on the people of the ghetto with whom he'd grown up,
Suss courageously refuses to
declare his "Aryan" status, even though it means he will die on
the gallows. The Feuchtwangler book
was designed in roundabout fashion to strike a blow against
anti-Semitism.
But when Jud Suss was
filmed in Germany at the behest of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph
Goebbels in 1940, its original
message was twisted and perverted into an argument in favor of
"ethnic
cleansing." As played by
Werner Krauss, Suss is not only genuinely Jewish, but also an
amalgam
of every vicious caricature
ever concocted by the anti-Semitic propagandists of the past two
centuries. With hooked nose and
greasy beard, Krauss portrays Suss as a whining, wheedling,
hand-wringing
subhuman rapist; small
wonder that Krauss was proclaimed an Actor of the State by the
Nazis.
The final scene of Jud Suss
shows a screaming, protesting Suss being hanged in the public
square;
the scene is directed to cast
Suss' tormenters in an utterly sympathetic light, and perhaps even
to invoke cheers from an
impressionable audience. Though disgusting beyond belief, Jud
Suss should be seen at least once,
if only to show what a dangerous weapon film can be in the hands
of hate merchants.
In German with English subtitles. (1:30) (B/B) - UR
~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
OLYMPIA
Having proven her mettle with her still-astonishing propaganda
epic
Triumph of the Will,
German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl furthered her reputation with
the brilliant, two-part Olympia,
an all-inclusive filmed record of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. In its
original 220-minute form, the film
was designed as a paean to Aryan superiority, likening the
strong-limbed
young German athletes
with the godlike participants of the ancient Olympic games. By
accident
or design, however, the film
transends politics, resulting in an across-the-board tribute to
all the Olympic participants -- even those
whose racial makeup did not come up to the "pure" standards
established
by the Third Reich. This is
especially true in the first portion of the film, in which black
American runner Jessie Owens emerges as
the star (Owens' subsequent snub by Hitler and staff is ignored).
The second half of the film is the more
impressive technically, with Riefenstahl utilizing an astonishing
variety of camera speeds and angles to
record the diving competition. Working 16 hours a day, seven
days a week, Riefenstahl and her staff were
often denied desirable camera angles, forcing them to improvise
with telephoto lenses; the results are
often far more dramatically impressive than the
up-close-and-personal
approach taken by contemporary
TV cameramen. After an editing process that took nearly 18
months, Riefenstahl added icing to the cake
with a richly evocative soundtrack - an added touch which, so far
as the filmmaker was concerned, "made"
the picture. Inasmuch as the German government was still
trying to curry favor with the outside world
in early 1938, Olympia was shipped out in various reedited
versions, each favoring the athletes of the
release country. Most currently available English-language
versions avoid any references to Hitler or
Nazism-quite a feat, considering the preponderence of
swastikas
at the Olympic site.
~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
TRIUMPH OF THE WILL
Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens) is a filmed
record
of the 1934 Nazi Party Convention,
in Nuremberg. No, it is more than just a record: it is an
exultation of Adolf Hitler, who from the
moment his plane descends from Valhalla-like clouds is visually
characterized as a God on Earth.
The "Jewish question" is disposed of with a few fleeting closeups;
filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl
prefers to concentrate on cheering crowds, precision marching,
military
bands, and Hitler's
climactic speech, all orchestrated, choreographed and illuminated
on a scale that makes
Griffith and DeMille look like poverty-row directors. It has been
alleged that the climactic rally,
"spontaneous" Sieg-Heils and all, was pre-planned according to
Riefenstahl's
specifications,
the better to take full advantage of its cinematic potential.
Allegedly,
propaganda minister Joseph
Goebbels resented the presence and intrusion of a woman director,
but finally had to admit that
her images, achieved through the use of 30 cameras and 120
assistants,
were worth a thousand
speeches. Possibly the most powerful propaganda film ever made,
Triumph
of the Will is also,
in retrospect, one of the most horrifying. ~
Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
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